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Dietary Supplements help Improve Vitamin Status

By Michael McBurney

It isn’t unusual to see headlines suggesting multivitamins are a waste of money. People are sometimes told that vitamins present in supplements are not absorbed into the body. Today’s main citation puts that misperception to rest.

Bariatric surgery is a surgical procedure increasingly being used to treat morbid obesity. Surgically bypassing the stomach and its acidic secretions impairs digestion and increases the risk of micronutrient deficiency. Aaseth and colleagues assessed dietary supplement usage and serum vitamin concentrations in 443 patients for 5 years following bypass surgery. Use of multivitamin, calcium/vitamin D and vitamin B12 supplements increased from 1-9% of patients before surgery to ~80% at year 1, then usage dropped off by 5 years (52-83%).

But this is the main story: serum concentrations of vitamins B, B6, B12, folic acid, C and D were significantly higher in vitamin supplement users (vs no supplement use) at both 1 and 5 years (Table 4). In this cohort, 163 patients were found to have vitamin concentrations below normal reference levels and advised to use supplements.

The authors write, “At the next follow-up visit (after patients had been recommended to change their supplementation regime), vitamin concentrations were within the normal reference range in 140 of 163 cases (85.9%).” This paper provides unequivocal evidence that vitamins present in supplement form are absorbed, even from the intestinal tract of individuals with reduced digestive and absorptive capacity.